While I become less impressed with McPhee's acting week to week, she's getting no help from the direction in this episode. When she responds to Ivy the Rebecca is "not that bad," she should have played it with a sarcastic smile. The one note polite thing is boring, let her be human for a change.

I'm not buying that. Few star egos outside of Andy Kaufman's would let a roomful of fellow artists believe they were cluelessly bad .

I think Sela Ward is brain meltingly hot. Where's she been?

Do It!

Marc Maron > Kevin Nealon > Carlos Mencia > You

I know this will not change your mind about the rest of Joss' work, but in no way can he be blamed for Alien: Resurrection.  The French director barely read the script, much less followed it.  He used the movie as a platform for visual style like his previous movies Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, and…

Which may however change completely after The Avengers.  His A-list director shot is long overdue; he should have gotten X-men 3 instead of Shit Shatner, er I mean Bret Ratner.

I was thinking of the Intiative consistently about a third of the way, the contemporary government institution crossed with monsters and mythology vibe. The reveal where Riley and his frat brother enter the closet for a retina scan, and down into the lab complex was one of my favorite reveals ever. Alone in my…

I started noticing what people are complaining about with the Leo actor this week. I guess he previously got a pass from me because, frankly, so many real young men seem super backwards and goofy these days, I thought it was a bit. But maybe he really is just bad.

To the contrary, that is a perfect demonstration of Class for Hire. Low brow projects can get a Kingsley / Caine / Hackman type pedigreed workaholic actor to try to give it some respectability, which may fail utterly, but all that matters to dude is the paycheck. See Pacino in Jack and Jill.

The irony for me is I didn't watch it on the air because I thought the title guaranteed carboard cliche characters and taped up glasses. If there had been an AVC to cover it I might have known. Every promo made me roll my eyes because of the title.

Kingsley = Class for Hire
Shane Black = Crass for Hire

This is one of those Newswire items where I *kind of* get what the jokes are about, and kind of don't.  I guess if I listened to the Kanye song, I would get it.  But that ain't happening.

Forgot about that.  Oh well, an over-Changified Community is still better than virtually everything else.

You might be right, but I hope not.  I'm in the "less Chang is more" camp.

They got great reads from him on the jokes, too, like "It was awesome. But also, it wasn't?"   Which might not have been easy, as I know personally from using him as a voice-over artist in past jobs doing TV promos.  He's one of the VO guys who is known for giving copy an unusual emphasis (listen to his Ken Burns Jazz…

Yeah, lots of good throw-away text and graphic gags to pause on during re-watchings!

I agree that the format worked beautifully.  When they started with moving video, I was actually scared the stills and narration would become only a bookend device, and was very happy they kept it consistently throughout.

Agreed, I totally don't get how Todd (as with the hilarity level of the 1st third) is on the fence about them. C'mon Todd, it was so clean and perfect (their ages being an asset because adults have rusty pillow fight skills, god damn!), yet - to me - unexpected. AND it spares us a full episode, which I did fear, of…

I love the use of Leonard and the blind black man (probably introduced last episode for use here,) to get the feel of the Burns doc old eyewitnesses and historians, in an otherwise too young cast of secondary characters. Love this ep. hilarious out of the gate, I totally don't get the critique that it was slow…